Prana Health Food and Vegetarian Restaurant doubles as a health-food store. Juices and shakes are made to order, and a steam table in back holds the daily offerings. Everything is made fresh daily, and there are always several vegan options.
In a shopping center just west of Miami International Airport, Dominican-born Yanelis Vasquez practices his dual vocations -- cooking and accounting.
Prana Health Food and Vegetarian Restaurant doubles as Vasquez's bookkeeping office and triples as a health-food store selling supplements, grains, cereals, flours, natural snacks, incense, books and meditation CDs. Juices and shakes are made to order, and a steam table in back holds the daily offerings.
Specials include cauliflower-sunflower seed soup and tofu scramble on Monday, chickpea and calabaza stew on Tuesday, couscous with spinach on Wednesday, pea and tofu curry on Thursday and vegetarian meatballs on Friday. Saturday is always a surprise. The schedule is printed on a flier but is not adhered to rigidly, with extra dishes added most days.
Prana is Sanskrit for breath and means the life-sustaining force of living beings and the vital energy of the universe. It is a central concept in yoga, as prana flows through a network of channels in the body called nadi (meridians) connected to breathing.
Vasquez is into both yoga and healthy vegetarian eating, and wants his customers to strive for enlightenment, even if just during lunch. He left the Dominican Republic in 1989 for Puerto Rico, where he lived at a yoga center and trained as a vegetarian cook while studying accounting at night.
He opened his accounting business in Miami in 2000. A year ago he added the restaurant, and a few months ago he hired Venezuelan-born Maria Mercado, a veteran vegetarian, to help manage the place.
Everything is made fresh daily, and there are always several vegan options. Pumpkin cream soup, for example, is simply calabaza, onions, garlic and cilantro pureed with a little extra virgin olive oil. You can make a meal from any of the soups and a cake-like bread made from the tiny teff grain and ground nuts.
Tofu dishes show up almost every day. Tofu-pea and tofu-spinach curries are on the mild side. Lasagne, made with eggplant and textured vegetable protein crumbles, is delicious, oozing melted cheese and seasoned tomato sauce. All pasta is whole wheat. Elbow or shell macaroni is tossed with almonds and sunflower seeds and a little olive oil.
Quinoa is steamed like rice with veggies. Vegetable curry is sprinkled with spirulina (blue green algae powder). Potatoes mashed with spinach and milk are not to be missed. Other favorites include vegetable-stuffed plantain balls, black beans, tabbouleh, sandwiches and salads.
Dessert includes carrot muffins, carob and cream cheese cake, and apple cinnamon cake. The Indian mantras playing in the background are meant to harmonize the space -- and perhaps your well-fed soul.
